I recently talked with yet another person who was disappointed because her VA had assured her she knew how to do a certain task. In the end, she had to go elsewhere to get the work done properly which cost her more time, many nerves, and more money that didn’t have to be spent had the VA been truthful and admitted that she didn’t have the knowledge for this particular task.
After graduating from the training program I became a full member of the AssistU community. This also meant that I was required to sign its ethics pledge. One paragraph of this pledge states that I will not offer any service that I am not proficient in. That shows the standards AssistU sets for its Virtual Assistant members.
Believe me, I am not happy having to write about my profession in this way. In fact, it saddens me that a few people can so negatively impact the reputation of an entire profession. Not every VA can do all the tasks you need done. And there is nothing wrong with that. As the client, you need to make sure, as much as possible, that you get the excellent service you pay for.
Here is my rule of thumb: if I know I can do excellent work of about 75-80% of the workload, I will take the client on. During the Intake process we talk about the tasks that we need to find someone else for and how this will be handled so that we go into the client relationship with clear understanding and expectations.
When you look for a VA, is it more important to you that she knows how to do all the tasks you have, or that you have someone who will handle the majority of the workload really well and have other smaller parts outsourced to others?